{"id":39372,"date":"2018-09-04T14:14:20","date_gmt":"2018-09-04T11:14:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=39372"},"modified":"2022-03-29T18:20:02","modified_gmt":"2022-03-29T15:20:02","slug":"the-power-and-pathos-of-an-image","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/the-power-and-pathos-of-an-image\/","title":{"rendered":"The Power and Pathos of an Image"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[405,363,369],"acf":{"old_id":"39372","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":34255,"related_cahpter":"39","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"The image of his father reminded him of who he was, who he could be and of his core values and beliefs","content":"

Can a still image move an individual to act?<\/span><\/p>\n

Writers on photography reflect upon this question and speak of the pathos of an image.<\/span><\/p>\n

Susan Sontag, in <\/span>On Photography<\/em> <\/span>writes: \u201cIt is a nostalgic time right now, and photographs actively promote nostalgia. Photography is an elegiac art, a twilight art. Most subjects photographed are, just by virtue of being photographed, touched with pathos.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Similarly, French literary critic, Roland Barthes, in <\/span>Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography<\/span><\/em>, writes:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026in this glum desert, suddenly a specific photography reaches me; it animates me, and I animate it. So that is how I must name the attraction which makes it exist: an <\/span>animation<\/span><\/em>. <\/span><\/i>\u2026The anticipated essence of the photograph could not, in my mind, be separated from the \u2018pathos\u2019 of which, from the first glance, it consists.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Both writers reflect on the power of an image, and the emotional experience involved in photography using the Greek concept of \u201cpathos.\u201d In the Greek tradition, pathos was an appeal to the audience\u2019s emotions, sympathies and imagination in order to get them to act or behave in a certain way.<\/span><\/p>\n

This sense of pathos and a move to act (or refrain from acting) generated by an image, is one that can be similarly felt in the Babylonian Talmud (Sotah 36b), in its description of Joseph seeing the image of his father while being seduced by the wife of Potiphar in Genesis Chapter 39:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cShe caught him by his garment, saying \u201clie with me,\u201d and at that very moment it was the image of his father that came and appeared to him in the window, and he said to him, \u201cJoseph: your brothers are destined to be inscribed on the <\/span>efod<\/span><\/em> and you are among them. Do you want your name to be erased from among them and be called \u201ca companion of harlots?!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

One interpretation of this <\/span>midrash<\/span><\/em> suggests that the image was actually Joseph\u2019s own reflection which strongly resembled his father\u2019s. And so, in refraining from sin with Potiphar\u2019s wife, Joseph takes to heart the spiritual heritage of his father\u2019s household.<\/span><\/p>\n

The image reminded him of who he was, who he could be and of his core values and beliefs. This is the power and pathos of an image.<\/span><\/p>\n

(Cover photograph by the author)<\/p>\n","image":{"ID":48184,"id":48184,"title":"shk-39","filename":"shk-39.jpg","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/shk-39.jpg","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/where-to-look\/shk-39-2\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"shk-39-2","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":48146,"date":"2019-01-26 20:58:02","modified":"2022-03-29 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